The Florida Senate unveiled a higher education budget with an over $600 million increase, setting the stage for a battle with a budget-slashing Florida House.
- Florida Senate higher education budget increases $632.6 million
- Florida House budget cuts $120 million
- House seeks to punish lavish spending
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Funding for Florida's state universities would rise by $632.6 million under a budget proposal unveiled Tuesday by state senate leaders.
The blueprint diverges significantly from the House leadership's higher education plan, which calls for slashing campus funding by more than $120 million amid revelations of questionable spending by university foundations.
| Florida Senate | Florida House |
|---|---|
| $10 million for Emerging Preeminent Research Universities | Eliminates Emerging Preeminent Research Universities funding |
| $1.25 million for UCF PTSD Clinic for vets, first responders | $2 million for UCF PTSD Clinic for vets, first responders |
| Keeps $3.9 million UCF funds for Dr. Phillips PAC | Eliminates $3.9 million UCF funds for Dr. Phillips PAC |
| $180 million increase for Bright Futures Scholarships | $11.6 million cut for Bright Futures |
| No tuition increases | No tuition increases |
| Cuts $55 million in remedial education programs | $62.7 million cut to state college funding |
In crafting a budget that boosts the university system's operational funding by 11 percent and nearly doubles student financial aid, Senate Higher Education Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Bill Galvano (R-Bradenton) has drawn a line in the sand in the chamber's latest cross-rotunda showdown with the House.
Depriving universities of increased funding, he said, would hurt their efforts to raise their national rankings by attracting top-tier faculty members.
"We are the third largest state in the union, number one destination in the word. We should have destination universities, and you can't steep that argument in some sort of affordability cape," Galvano said.
House Republicans are taking a different approach to the higher education budget, lambasting administrators at some schools, including UF and USF, for diverting taxpayer dollars to their campus foundations. The foundations have in turn spent lavishly on donor getaways and executive salaries.
During testimony before the House Appropriations Committee this month, it was revealed the USF Foundation's chief executive is being paid $532,000 per year.
The House's slash-and-burn higher education budget is tantamount to a form of punishment, according to House Speaker Richard Corcoran (R-Land O'Lakes), who has made rooting out state government waste and abuse a cornerstone of his agenda.
"There's cockroaches everywhere," Corcoran has declared of Florida's sprawling -- and costly -- bureaucracy.
But punishment-by-cuts wouldn't be exacted only on the offending campuses. Under the House's plan, all 12 state universities would realize a near-equal amount of pain.
"Across the board cuts is a way of us not doing our job as to looking into certain functions and seeing their efficiency or their effectiveness, and so, that's not the path that I want to go," Galvano said.
Corcoran has suggested that, with reserves totaling $800 million, campuses should have little problem making ends meet in the event the legislature approves the House's cuts.
With the state facing a deficit that could total more than $700 million, the speaker says difficult choices will have to be made in virtually every area of the budget, including higher education.